OMFG - a HUGE spider just dropped off of the ceiling onto my desk!

[csziggy]

Right in front of my face. AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!

I deal with lots of stuff, but spiders threatening to get ON ME freak me the fuck out!

First thing I did was to roll my chair back, jump up and run out of the room. Then I found a weapon - the extendable net that I bought to skim crud off my pond but that serves duty in the house to direct birds out of the house.

I had to hunt for the spider - it'd dropped down under the desk and was cowering at the back corner.

Then I beat that fucking spider TO DEATH! I'm leaving it's dead body on the floor so I can check to make sure it is STILL DEAD.

I was only awake because I needed some water. Now I am pumped with adrenaline and feel crawly as if there were little spiders all over me. GAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! I may not be able to get back to sleep- EVER.

Too bad I pulverized it - I went to look it up and it could be a brown recluse spider. Now I will never know - not that I would have EVER examined close enough to be sure. They say the way to be sure is to count the eyes. Oh HELL NO!

Excuse me while I jitter for a few hours....

[Arkansas Granny]

1. I am with you 100% on spiders. I had to get one of the guys I work with come to my office

and kill this big, long legged spider that was lurking under my desk one morning. He went in with a broom and was getting ready to whack the daylights out of it when he realized it was a wadded up rubber band. It took a long time to live that one down.

[csziggy]

5. LOL on hte rubber band!

Usually my husband is my spider getter. He'll coax it into a cup and carry it outside. But he's visiting his Mom and is 90 miles away. I thought about calling him but I don't think he'd pick up his stuff and drive home at 3:30 AM. Plus the spider would have been in hiding by the time he got here.

[woodsprite]

2. I sooooo feel your pain! I'm exactly the same way.

I don't think Brown recuse are really that big. I've only seen one a couple of times though, when camping. I live in Delaware and the largest spiders I've seen here are wolf spiders. I stepped on one once, just enough to kill it but not destroy it. I took it in the house to show the kids and look at it under a microscope the kids had just received as a gift. With a regular kitchen paring knife, I could ping its darned fangs, and that was using the naked eye to see it. With legs and body, he was 2.5-3" in diameter.

To me, even creepier than the crawling kind are the jumping ones. Just killed one of those suckers that took up residence in my mail box. It was huge for a jumping spider (1/2 to 3/4" long), beautiful black orange and green, took a pic of it before I totally squashed it!

[csziggy]

6. It probably wasn't a recluse - but it looked a lot like one

Little body, great long legs. Brown body. Recluses do live in this county according the Florida Department of Agriculture.

I'm OK with spiders so long as they don't get right in my face or on me. Traumatic experience as a little kid, getting bit by a spider while in the shower. Usually I'll leave them alone or get my husband to catch and release them outside.

I actually think the jumping spiders are kind of cool. It's the ones with the really long legs that freak me out.

[Arkansas Granny]

9. We have recluse where I live, too. I've seen and killed several, myself.

I don't declare war on all spiders, only those who try to occupy my living space. Spiders outside are generally safe and I'm fascinated by the ones that build webs on my front porch in the summertime. Every night they weave a new web and in the morning they dismantle it. The little jumping spiders are pretty neat, too, as long as they don't jump on me. The ones at my house are black, furry and have blue eyes when you shine a light on them.

[csziggy]

10. Some sources say recluses don't live in Florida

But they do - and not just the North American native brown recluse. Florida imports new varieties. We also have every species of widow spider:
http://www.freshfromflorida.com/Divisions-Offices/Plant-Industry/Plant-Industry-Publications/Pest-Alerts/Pest-Alert-Venomous-Spiders-in-Florida

And people worry about alligators...

True story - my first year in college I went to summer session to do an independent project. They gave me my own office since a professor had retired and the new professor was not coming in until fall.

I was excited about the office until I realized I had visited it during my tour of the college the year before. The biology professor that was in there during the tour studied widow spiders. At the time of my visit he had shelves covered in small containers of live spiders - HUNDREDS of spiders.

My mentor assured me that all the spiders had been moved and that their pest service had made sure there were none left. I was still not comfortable in that office.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. This is why you need an assault "style" weapon.

[csziggy]

7. The net worked - but my fly swatter would have been more effective

I haven't been able to find it in months. Guess it's time to buy a new fly swatter - one with a long long handle!

[Kingofalldems]

4. Spiders are great. Natural pest control.

I want them in my house.

[csziggy]

8. I would have been perfectly fine if it had stayed up inside the light fixture

That it dropped down from.

There has been a spider living under my bathroom sink cabinet for two winters. She hangs out at night. If she gets too bold I sprinkle water from the sink on her and she runs back under the cabinet. She's fine. She's not a seriously poisonous spider and doesn't get right in my face.

But this sucker dropped right in front of my face. AND it was the type of spider that looks like a brown recluse. It had to die.

[Skittles]

16. yup

and the bigger ones, I trap them and evict them

[Laffy Kat]

11. You need one of these!

I have used my Critter Catcher a couple of times since I got it!

[csziggy]

12. Now that is brilliant! I think I'll order two of them

Thank you for recommending it.

A note to anyone else - they are cheaper from the link above than anywhere else I found them, even Amazon.

[Laffy Kat]

13. They are pricey!

I bought two as well. I sent one to my sister in Florida because they have HUGE spi--dees and bugs in their house
like ALL THE TIME. Also, they are shipped from the UK and take WEEKS to arrive, just FYI. But the Critter Catchers do work, just as demonstrated.

[csziggy]

14. Yes, part of the order process is agreeing it will take weeks for it to arrive

But considering it's coming from the UK, under $10 for the S&H is reasonable.

I do wish they had longer handles - two feet is not enough!

[MosheFeingold]

15. You missed your chance

Perhaps you could have let it bite you and then acquired super powers.

[csziggy]

17. Or I could have died a horrible death and no one would have found me

Until my husband got home late Wednesday night.

See, there I am always looking on the bright side!

[kairos12]

18. You were arachanoid.

[csziggy]

19. I certainly was! I still am - now that it is getting late evening

I'm worried about any of her friends and family showing up.



They could want revenge.

[Chellee]

20. Why on earth would I even click on a thread with the words "HUGE spider" in the title?

Why!?! Now I feel all creepy crawly, and it didn't even happen to me. I'm having creepy crawly sympathy pains.

A couple of weeks ago a co-worker said, "Oooh! You have to watch this video!" It was of a GiGANTIC spider (please God, let it be from Australia) that someone was attempting to flush down the toilet. It was too big to flush. Too big, too strong, it swam against the whooshing water, and then it hid under the rim. It didn't even completely fit under the rim. And it stayed there, where it would be inches away from your bare behind if you were to innocently sit without looking first. Now I have to check before I can go. Even though spiders like that probably come from Australia. (Please God, let it live in Australia.)

You have my deepest sympathies. May it be really and truly squashed DEAD DEAD DEAD.

[csziggy]

22. Just DO NOT watch the videos of the Australian guy vacuuming spiders

Believe me, you will not like it.

Now I want to go double check every toilet in the house...

The spider is still dead. I left the body on the floor so I could check it to make sure. One time my husband thought he'd killed one and threw it in the trash. Apparently it was just stunned and climbed out. That one DID fit down the toilet, but now when I try to kill a spider I make sure it is really dead.

I have named him Franco and he is still dead.

[Chellee]

23. I won't.

I wouldn't have watched the toilet one if I could have gotten away. It happened too fast. "Watch this!" and then a phone with the video already begun shoved in front of my face.

Rest in pieces, Franco.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. I'm OK with spiders, but maybe that's easy for me

because we don't have brown recluses or black widows or any of the really nasty ones here in the far north. There are some largish garden spiders and daddy-long-legs (which technically aren't spiders) but they don't really bother me. The cats eat them if they get in the house, except the multitudes in the basement (where the cats aren't allowed because they can get into the crawl space). I might feel differently if there were venomous ones about, though.

(As an aside, I'm a volunteer with our Master Gardener program, and we have a gardeners' hot line where people can call in and ask questions. Sometimes the questions aren't exactly about gardens, like one I got where the caller was sort of freaking out because she thought she had a brown recluse spider in her apartment. I told her I'd check with an entomologist at the U and get back to her - and I found out that only one brown recluse has ever been documented in Minnesota, and that was in 1953.)

[csziggy]

24. I'm OK with spiders if they stay where they belong - outside

And not hanging in front of my face.

I've dealt with those huge golden orb spiders - down here they build webs that can cross roads. When I was a kid we'd go trail riding down some dikes for the old phosphate pits. There would be trees on both sides and hardly anyone ever went there. Whoever was first in the line of riders would carry a long stick like a flag pole. When it would catch a web, they'd shake the spider off the stick.

Those big spiders aren't seriously venomous to humans but their bites hurt like hell. Plus if they landed on the horses' faces or ears, the horses would get agitated.

My cat didn't react to the spider last night, but he was irked that my screaming and jumping around woke him up. He is no good at pest control.

Some of the articles claim that recluses don't live in Florida, but twenty years ago my MIL in Panama City, Florida, was bitten by one and got the serious necrosis at the site. They had to take a good sized divot out of her arm. I trust the article at the link I posted above that details all the varieties of widow and recluse spiders that have been documented in Florida.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

25. See, that's what's nice about the frigid North.

Almost nothing is venomous (there are a few timber rattlers along the Mississippi bluffs, but they are timid and rarely seen) and the bugs, although plentiful, are not especially large. The black flies you find in the woods have a mean bite but I don't live in the woods. There are also bears, wolves, coyotes and cougars, but I don't worry much about those. I did see an opossum in my back yard last summer, which was sort of cool, because we never used to have those. Climate change, I guess.

[csziggy]

26. Yes, but it is frigid! I just can't take the cold

My Dad's family was from Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula. Mom was from central Alabama. Mom spent one winter in Houghton while my Dad finished his degree at Michigan Tech. She swore she would never see snow again. I've seen pictures of their rooming house from that winter - two story tall ice cycles hanging from the eaves and snow taller than the cars! After that, Dad did never went back to Michigan.

It turns out that my mother's side of the family has Raynaud's (ray-NOHZ) disease - when we get cold our peripheral blood vessels close and restrict blood flow. So if I am out in cold weather, the blood stops flowing to my fingers and toes. I can't handle frozen stuff - my husband has to get food out of the freezer for me.

I've heard the mosquitoes up north are huge and really aggressive?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

27. The mosquitoes are normal-sized but there are a lot of them.

It hasn't been bad yet this year but there have been some summers where I worried about being carried off and sucked dry while carrying my trash out to the alley.

I don't mind the cold; I just put on more clothes (though I can see where Raynaud's could be a problem - I knew a guy who had that). It's hot, humid weather that I can't stand. I took an offer for early retirement just to avoid a transfer to Atlanta, which would have killed me.

[csziggy]

28. I used to not mind the heat and humidity

I'd tell people I sweat a lot better than I shiver. I grew up in Florida with no air conditioning so it was just normal for me. When we went to Santa Fe I had problems with my sinuses drying out and bleeding because it was so arid.

But since the summer I got both knees replaced and spent the entire summer inside I've gotten breathing problems with high heat and humidity as well as cold dry weather. It doesn't help that I am getting old and out of shape, but I end up panting and getting light headed in what used to be normal conditions for me.

[GOLGO 13]

29. Missed the chance to get Spider-man like powers.

You've DOOMED us all!